tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-884076012965259253.post4629999014274284269..comments2013-10-31T12:24:56.541+11:00Comments on Digitally Downloaded: Breaking the Wii U down; what each bit meansMatt Sainsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18102427451460905581noreply@blogger.comBlogger41125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-884076012965259253.post-62203761393053197562013-01-13T23:30:49.735+11:002013-01-13T23:30:49.735+11:00Excellent article Chris.
I agree that games like ...Excellent article Chris. <br />I agree that games like GTAV are possible. It is a question of optimisation. I hate it when devs like Crytek talk about WiiU like it is an outdated piece of hardware. Crytek should be the first one to shut up, with their un-optimised games. <br />Sometimes to be honest I wonder if developers do not optimise games properly just to promote pc upgrades/ the need new consoles. <br />Look at games like Uncharted 3. PS3 supposed to be &quot;outdated&quot; and yet it looks better than most PC games. The usual excuses devs say about graphic updates in their games, that &quot;new algorithms are found&quot; or existing ones are improved are complete lies. Algorithms, data structures, etc are all already developed. We got data structures with efficiency O(I) for various functions which is as good as it can get. Then why we see this graphics update? <br /><br />My theory:<br />-They are lazy. <br />-They deliberating hold resources back. Why invest in better graphics, thus more costs, in a recently established console?<br />-Keep something &quot;new&quot; for their audiences. <br />-Able to moan about new consoles.<br /><br />I believe WiiU has the power needed packed inside it. It just needs devs to invest time learning parallel programming for GPGPU and work things out.<br /><br />The only thing that worries me in that console, in terms of hardware: <br />-Lack of space. <br />-Tri-core PowerPC CPU. Why not go an AMD four cores CPU as PS3/360 will go? It would have made devs lives easier.Athonlinenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-884076012965259253.post-41212369908912072112013-01-06T14:06:58.145+11:002013-01-06T14:06:58.145+11:00Thanks! :)Thanks! :)Chris I.http://slapshot82.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-884076012965259253.post-72634110471540439852013-01-06T10:39:52.657+11:002013-01-06T10:39:52.657+11:00Damn good article!!Damn good article!!John Olearynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-884076012965259253.post-16970812909148120812012-12-06T13:14:43.763+11:002012-12-06T13:14:43.763+11:00Oh, that&#39;s indeed the perfect reason to do so!...Oh, that&#39;s indeed the perfect reason to do so! Um... how do I get my wife to play Warriors Orochi 3? Now that&#39;s a question to find an answer too! HahaChris I.http://slapshot82.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-884076012965259253.post-23030764769239942682012-12-05T16:35:14.902+11:002012-12-05T16:35:14.902+11:00I found this to be an excellent article. It&#39;s...I found this to be an excellent article. It&#39;s honestly the first non-biased, fact driven piece I&#39;ve read. Whether this system will match Xbox or PS3 systems or keep pace with the new models doesn&#39;t matter to me. It&#39;s a totally different system. One thing I&#39;d like to know is what reason does Nintendo have for not releasing the full spec of their console? There is enough negativity out there already for a machine that looks awesome and plays even better. (Many side by sides look like the U is more crisp and detailed.) I guess I found myself astounded by the ridiculous comments I was seeing all over the place especially having owned one and experienced nothing like what I was reading. So this is more than refreshing to see someone take the time to dispel a lot of the hot air out there.Michael Hoffmanhttp://www.facebook.com/michael.hoffman.758399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-884076012965259253.post-54401444126136150032012-12-05T14:42:34.809+11:002012-12-05T14:42:34.809+11:00We would just be stating the obvious...those syste...We would just be stating the obvious...those systems MUST offer a certain jump on performance because they differentiate from Nintendo (and encroaching upstart platforms) on that axiom.<br />However, it seems you are making the point that their bump in hardware will place them above what the Wii U can handle comfortably?<br />If I were MS or Sony, of course I would absolutely want to position my hardware as such...I just don&#39;t know if we could afford to do so.Andrew Chennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-884076012965259253.post-70806150655360620082012-12-05T14:33:16.451+11:002012-12-05T14:33:16.451+11:00I did not know people cared so much about those du...I did not know people cared so much about those ducks, hahah.<br />A broader point here though is that trumpeting specs and tech demos sometimes serves to mislead...because they are marketing points that serve a marketing purpose.<br />This is probably repeating something oft-said, but We can again look to the Gamecube as an example. When the paper specs from the three consoles of that generation were lined up, people bemoaned the &#39;Cubes lower numbers. In the end however, that unfortunate box was shown to be quite a beastly performer vs it&#39;s chief competitor...but that competitor wiped the floor because it turned out that awesome specs don&#39;t make superior games, awesome developers do.<br /><br />Also, thumbs up to &quot;every teardown = one mo sale!&quot;Andrew Chennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-884076012965259253.post-21573788660947903492012-12-05T14:17:45.795+11:002012-12-05T14:17:45.795+11:00Great points guys.
Digg, your last comment about ...Great points guys.<br /> Digg, your last comment about consoles being made just for gaming apps got me thinking....because with future consoles this may no longer be the case. The next Xbox may very likely run some win8 compatible variant. Sony will have to keep pace with MS and mobile threats while furthering their own ambitions to carve out a chunk of living rooms worldwide. And the Wii U, of course, has a large amount of resources reserved for persistent system processes, of which web browsing and a social network may be just the tip of the iceberg.<br />I have seen rumors that place anywhere from 4 to 8 gb in the new XBox...now how much of that will be reserved for the OS? :p<br /><br />At play may be the crux of traditional consoles going forward...is going more all-purpose the best way to compete and thrive this next generation or is there a point of too much functionality compromising core gaming performance to the point that customers are turned off?Andrew Chennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-884076012965259253.post-35829917110009145442012-12-05T10:58:22.939+11:002012-12-05T10:58:22.939+11:00My favourite thing about the game - and the reason...My favourite thing about the game - and the reason I decided to trade in my PS3 version of it to keep the Wii U version. My wife and I can play local multiplayer in complete comfort! :)Matt Shttp://www.digitallydownloaded.net/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-884076012965259253.post-15935591390293522232012-12-05T10:56:39.343+11:002012-12-05T10:56:39.343+11:00Ah! I they did keep that feature. I thought that I...Ah! I they did keep that feature. I thought that I read somewhere that it was going to be cut. Good to see it made the cut! :)Chris I.http://slapshot82.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-884076012965259253.post-41459609547210945462012-12-05T10:10:48.342+11:002012-12-05T10:10:48.342+11:00It is double rendering - it&#39;s possible to play...It is double rendering - it&#39;s possible to play &quot;split screen&quot; Warriors Orochi where one player has the entire TV screen to themselves, and the other player has the Gamepad screen, and can happily be hacking away at the other side of the battlefield. <br /><br /><br />As far as I&#39;ve seen there&#39;s none of the usual concessions that Tecmo Koei makes when running split screen - the experience is exactly the same as if two people were playing single player. So that suggests to me the console is double-rendering. <br /><br /><br />And yeah, I&#39;m aware that the Warriors games are also double-rendered on the PS3. I&#39;m not really interested in trying to figure out which one is or isn&#39;t more powerful - I&#39;m just clarifying non-technical things for folks :PMatt Shttp://www.digitallydownloaded.net/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-884076012965259253.post-38866898126152547972012-12-05T10:00:28.452+11:002012-12-05T10:00:28.452+11:00&quot;People are all assuming that the Xbox 360 an...&quot;People are all assuming that the Xbox 360 and PS4 will be all-powerful <br />consoles. The reality is that even if they have all that extra power, <br />there will be so few games produced that take advantage of the <br />technology that it will be irrelevant.&quot;<br /><br />It all depends on the development platform and Sony has been listening to Devs with the PS3 creating a development platform that was useable. I hear the VITA dev platform is great and adds a lot of productivity to the development cycle.<br /><br />Suggesting that Sony and MS are including technology in their systems that developers won&#39;t be able to utilize because of a learning curve isn&#39;t exactly true. For one I am sure Naughty Dog got a early look at the system to dig into it to help with the Development Platform (kind of like how they helped with PS3).<br /><br />The fact is there will likely be launch games that use most of the bells and whistles because they will want to visually separate them from the older generation. They will likely not be the best examples as the consoles age the software prowess will increase.DarthDigglernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-884076012965259253.post-13576700247929201792012-12-05T09:53:23.917+11:002012-12-05T09:53:23.917+11:00It&#39;s mind boggling - isn&#39;t it?
I think ...It&#39;s mind boggling - isn&#39;t it? <br /><br /><br />I think the reason they don&#39;t is because they would get so much negativity before release that it would turn off potential buyers. Nintendo doesn&#39;t need massive amounts of power to sell consoles any more and it&#39;s easier for them to avoid this altogether. <br /><br /><br />Heck, with both the 3DS and now Wii U, people fully believed they were going to be &quot;next generation&quot; powerful. Wii U was 50% more powerful than the PS3 and the Resident Evil Revelations on 3DS had better graphics than the PS3 too. Why should they release the specs? HahaChris I.http://slapshot82.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-884076012965259253.post-36330557076648957622012-12-05T09:49:51.559+11:002012-12-05T09:49:51.559+11:00Hi Moribund Cadaver,
There have been a few lacklu...Hi Moribund Cadaver,<br /><br />There have been a few lacklustre ports and we will indeed see things get better as developers have more time to learn to build on its architecture. <br /><br />Ninja Gaiden III on Wii U is getting little talk because the game was nowhere near expectations to the hardcore fans that have supported the series from its roots (including myself). I (sadly) have a 3/10 published review that&#39;s factored into the pot at Metacritic. I&#39;m glad that Nintendo did what they did with the title and that it&#39;s finding a few more fans now, but I hope that Team Ninja never does this again to it&#39;s loyal fan base. <br /><br /><br /><br />In response to another thing you stated, I think that the real issue that people are having with Wii U is that there&#39;s not a new AAA Nintendo title that absolutely stuns its owners. New Super Mario Bros. U is great, but it&#39;s been done before. It&#39;s needs either a brand new IP, or a new Metroid, Zelda to really show off what it can do.Chris I.http://slapshot82.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-884076012965259253.post-33900708327726213042012-12-05T09:39:12.991+11:002012-12-05T09:39:12.991+11:00Hi Gregory,
Thanks for stopping by!
I&#39;ll an...Hi Gregory,<br /><br />Thanks for stopping by! <br /><br />I&#39;ll answer both of your comments here in one - with the tri-core, I do indeed understand that it&#39;s as you stated it. The reason I worded it the way I did in the article wasn&#39;t to mislead, it was only to give a very basic understanding of how things work for the ones who have no idea of what a &quot;core&quot; or &quot;processor&quot; in it actually is. I&#39;m actually just walking in from work and trying to get to all of the comments between here and N4G, but I will indeed give it a read through and rearrange the wording if need be - thanks for the tip though, it&#39;s much appreciated. <br /><br />With the solder on the Xbox 360, I pondered placing this into the article, but I felt that I might get too off track with it, seeing how the entire piece is all but entirely focused on the Wii U. If someone didn&#39;t know what solder was - would I need to explain it and it&#39;s use in the piece too? So I chose not to get into that here, but your point is well taken. I didn&#39;t put that part in there to be used as a scare tactic by any means - I only wanted to give precaution to owners and future owners in my piece. <br /><br />It&#39;s obvious that your knowledge is beyond by basic knowledge of these issues - do you think that a completely unventilated Wii U could potentially fail? The amount of heat shielding and size of the heat sink makes me think that this thing could get extremely hot in the right (err... wrong!) conditions.Chris I.http://slapshot82.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-884076012965259253.post-37752212285335414902012-12-05T09:33:05.136+11:002012-12-05T09:33:05.136+11:00http://finance.yahoo.com/news/steve-ballmer-s-nigh...http://finance.yahoo.com/news/steve-ballmer-s-nightmare-is-coming-true-181558610.html <br /><br />A little off topic but given that what it could mean for the 720 relative to the WiiU I thought I would post itDavid Millerhttp://www.facebook.com/people/David-Miller/663731174noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-884076012965259253.post-72550875701822719962012-12-05T09:25:33.181+11:002012-12-05T09:25:33.181+11:00Hi DarthDiggler,
Thanks for your insightful comme...Hi DarthDiggler,<br /><br />Thanks for your insightful comment! <br /><br />eDRAM does do exactly what you&#39;ve said - boost it&#39;s efficiency - but the more efficient it is, the faster it processes information. It doesn&#39;t significantly improve its speeds, but even a small amount of an increase, is still an increase. <br /><br /><br /><br />I wanted to touch on the 1GB of reserve RAM in the piece too, but this article was only to give basic information to the many who don&#39;t understand any of this information at all. I do think that a good portion of that is used in the steaming process, because (to the best of my knowledge) the controller doesn&#39;t have any processing power.Chris I.http://slapshot82.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-884076012965259253.post-30975969532279177652012-12-05T09:13:02.733+11:002012-12-05T09:13:02.733+11:00Well in reference to the PC vs Consoles is that PC...Well in reference to the PC vs Consoles is that PCs are designed to run Windows, sure there are lots of tricks to open up that hardware directly but it is never quite as good as a console (in terms of maximizing the performance from the hardware).<br /><br />The console soup to nuts is made for gaming, so all the headroom available goes to gaming. If the Xbox 360 had to run something like Windows either the games would suffer or it would take 15 minutes to pull up your dashboard.DarthDigglernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-884076012965259253.post-13159785129110006742012-12-05T09:12:55.313+11:002012-12-05T09:12:55.313+11:00That was indeed a big hit for Sony and one that pl...That was indeed a big hit for Sony and one that played a major factor in the PS3 with Blu-ray.Chris I.http://slapshot82.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-884076012965259253.post-29511550895442146302012-12-05T09:11:51.916+11:002012-12-05T09:11:51.916+11:00Just to clarify Matt, the Wii U isn&#39;t double r...Just to clarify Matt, the Wii U isn&#39;t double rendering to stream the image, the rendering is done just as it is on other consoles and then the output itself is streamed over to the GamePad. The only difference here is that the Wii U uses a bit of power to stream the image away from the console, instead of through a cable to a television. <br /><br />If two completely separate images are produced and being played simultaneously by two separate gamers - one on the GamePad, the other on the television - then here you are indeed double rendering. <br /><br />But, Wii U isn&#39;t the first console to do this - the PS3 has been capable of doing this. If you&#39;ve got the PlayStation 3DTV, then you can play SimulView compatible games with the PS3 double rendering two separate images onto the same screen (both players are looking at the same screen, but each one sees an entirely separate image). Even Killzone 3 and Gran Turismo 5, which are both overly taxing on the console, can be played in SimulView!Chris I.http://slapshot82.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-884076012965259253.post-12632219756134764652012-12-05T09:06:17.948+11:002012-12-05T09:06:17.948+11:00@facebook-632146952:disqus
So now anyone skeptic...@facebook-632146952:disqus <br /><br />So now anyone skeptical of Nintendo is a Conspiracy Theorist and a Nintendo hater? Seriously that comment is loaded with so much rhetoric I am wondering if you are renting a room from Reggie. I am no Nintendo Hater, they were my console of choice when I was younger, but I grew up and Mario and Zelda didn&#39;t. I started preferring head-shots to tri-forces, giblets to goombas. You get my drift.<br /><br />The fact is Nintendo came out of the gate with Wii U trying to court the core game player. If you aren&#39;t going to come prepared with some specifications and allow the community to speculate you are doing a disservice to that core marketplace IMHO. <br /><br />Sure the Wii was a great success for Nintendo, but tell me how do the Third Parties feel? Considering most of them ported lack luster PS2 ports to the Wii, I would suggest that they may have a different opinion of the Wii than you do because of the lack of profitability for them. I am afraid when the next PlayStation and Xbox are released history may just repeat itself. The fact is the reason you have a Wii U Pro Gamepad is because third parties INSISTED on it, meaning &quot;no normal controller, don&#39;t expect games&quot;.DarthDigglernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-884076012965259253.post-87848334780599786892012-12-05T08:55:32.934+11:002012-12-05T08:55:32.934+11:00Rendering characters on-screen is a different issu...Rendering characters on-screen is a different issue to AI. Warriors Orochi is the only game that I&#39;ve seen criticism regarding the port struggling with rendering characters on-screen. <br /><br /><br />Those criticisms are fair - the game does struggle to display the same stuff on screen as the PS3/ Xbox 360 game. But then you realise the game is actually rendering double the number of characters - because it&#39;s streaming to the GamePad - and the game is something of a technical marvel, even if it doesn&#39;t look as good as the other console versions. Ironic!<br /><br /><br />But that doesn&#39;t have much to do with AI. The AI for Warriors games is always very simple. The Wii was able to handle the Warriors&#39; AI rountines.Matt Shttp://www.digitallydownloaded.net/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-884076012965259253.post-12712129754084922812012-12-05T08:44:03.022+11:002012-12-05T08:44:03.022+11:00Don&#39;t forget that the PS2 was also advertised ...Don&#39;t forget that the PS2 was also advertised as a DVD player as well as a game console that really put the final nail in the Dreamcast coffin.David Millerhttp://www.facebook.com/people/David-Miller/663731174noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-884076012965259253.post-18610189682777115242012-12-05T08:11:53.296+11:002012-12-05T08:11:53.296+11:00There are reports that AI is a challenge on the Wi...There are reports that AI is a challenge on the Wii U, especially with a large amount of characters on screen. Something that the PS3 / Xbox 360 didn&#39;t have too many problems with. As a hardcore gamer that is eye-brow raising.DarthDigglernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-884076012965259253.post-53493569716476610622012-12-05T08:09:15.828+11:002012-12-05T08:09:15.828+11:00Pretty much going forward any non-basic GPU is goi...Pretty much going forward any non-basic GPU is going to be a GPGPU. Traditionally the functions that have become GPGPU functions were done on the GPU. The whole birth to GPU computing is thanks to higher end gaming video cards. Mostly GPGPU computing is manner in how you program but now the GPUs have been given additional instruction sets for GPGPU code since it has become a popular means to compute in a relatively small form factor.<br /><br />That being said GPGPUs are generally for optimized tasks and not really &quot;programs&quot; or &quot;applications&quot; in the manner that most gamers know of. As the author points out physics is a very good fit for this as well as many other &quot;next gen&quot; graphical bells and whistles.<br /><br />In the manner of speaking for this article all the new consoles will contain GPGPUs. PS3&#39;s cell processor can be utilized in ways that are very similar to GPGPU processing.<br /><br /><br />The 2GB of RAM is a decent chunk and will allow Wii U to generate larger or prettier experiences than what you see on PS3/360, the speed of the memory being reported is a little troubling, although not a show stopper. I can say with some confidence that PS4/X720 will feature faster memory than the Wii U.<br /><br /><br />Both the Wii and the Xbox 360 feature eDRAM. Saying eDRAM boosts clocks speeds is not exactly accurate. eDRAM helps to get the most out of each cycle.<br /><br /><br />I would speculate that the Multi-Chip Module perhaps has contributed to the slower clock speeds. Maybe Wii U features a turbo mode? * SPECULATION ON MY PART *<br /><br /><br />The whole reason this information is even news is because these speeds are alarmingly low, even with the absolute best instruction sets and an optimal amount of eDRAM.<br /><br /><br />One thing I have not seen touched on is the reason why Wii U reserves 1GB of RAM for the system. I have to say my interest in Wii U was diminished when I heard that news. Are they using that much memory for the controller? I am assuming (due to lack of information) the tablet is just a streaming device with only a minimal amount of resources. Which would explain why 1GB is reserved for the system.<br /><br /><br />I just don&#39;t see the Wii U becoming the core console of choice. The battery times and heavy controller will likely have people gravitating to the standard Wii U controller (one that looks like an X360 controller).<br /><br /><br />The problem with Wii U going first is they are likely to get more slightly better ports from this generation. Unless the system really flies off the shelves there isn&#39;t much motivation for Developers (who are hurting) to risk doing awesome things on the Wii U. Not saying this as a soothsayer, saying this as a possibility.DarthDigglernoreply@blogger.com